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Waterfall - Enemies
Whether you defeated, spared, or even dated Papyrus, your next destination to the east is clear: The soaking depths of Waterfall, the third major area in Undertale. The enemies get tougher in Waterfall, so you may want to trek back to Snowdin Town and grab a few healing items before you head too deep into unfamiliar territory.
A short way into Waterfall you’ll find a save point, along with a few NPCs. If you didn't kill Papyrus you'll find Sans sitting here, and he'll ask if you want to hang out. Agree to trigger an important cut scene back at Grillby's. This is a prerequisite for something later, so you may want to agree. One screen east of here is another Box for storing your stuff.
There’s a rushing waterfall ahead, and you need to cross while avoiding the hunks of falling ice that try to rush you onto the platforms below. Weave through them to get to the other side. If you brush up against the waterfall you can find a hidden room containing an Old Tutu, a piece of equipment.
Things get a bit hairy in the next room, though only from an atmospheric POV. There’s another save point here, as well, which you can use if you felt the last one was entirely too remote.
The next area contains Bridge Seeds. These are useful little things that bloom when thrown into water, creating a bridge. Pick ‘em up and toss them in the water to the right, in a straight line, to get across the water ahead. Past this point you'll start running into enemies:
- Aarons. These beefy sea horsies like to flex, and will use their arms to try and hit you. They'll also sweat all over you. Scroll to the top of the box to more easily avoid the arms; stay near the bottom to avoid the sweat.
- Woshuas. What are they? Who knows. Woshuas like to clean, and try to strike you with bouncing soap bars and spurts of detergent. Hide in the corners either way. The green detergent spurts restore some HP, so touch them if you see an opening.
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Before leaving this area, deploy the Bridge Seeds along the southeastern patch of water in such a way that you can step off the land and onto them. There's a secret path to the east of this water that leads to a bench, under which you'll find an Abandoned Quiche. Poor thing.
There’s a telescope in the next room. Look through it and you can see ‘Check Wall’ through the scope by moving it around a bit. It refers to the conspicuously-blank wall down the northern dead end from here.
There’s a telescope in the next room. Look through it and you can see ‘Check Wall’ through the scope by moving it around a bit. It refers to the conspicuously-blank wall down the northern dead end from here.
Keep going east. The next room contains a series of wall plaques, as well as a raft on the east end of the dock. Hop on and it will spirit you across the water. Make sure you’ve healed up...
... because the knight you saw with Papyrus earlier will start hurling spears at you in the next room. Dash your way east, avoiding spears as best you can. If you get hit by one you’ll be thrown into a short mini game where you need to avoid flying spears. Walk low on the path, wait for the spears to fly, then move upward while sprinting east. Go low again once the knight is prepping for another throw. Don’t get caught too often (or just come through at full health) and this shouldn’t be too hard.
After a quick cut scene you’ll find a save point. In the next room is a Box, and beside the Box is a side room with another Box, as well as the Nice Cream vendor. If you buy a Nice Cream for 25 gold you can take a Punch Card from the Box. Get three and you’ll earn a free Nice Cream. What… what a deal. (If you're carrying an umbrella, which you can get soon, you'll get a discount down to 15 gold.)
To the east in the previous room is a duck. Yep. You can later use this duck to backtrack more quickly, but for now it's just a duck.
To the east in the previous room is a duck. Yep. You can later use this duck to backtrack more quickly, but for now it's just a duck.
Head south. Walk along the pathway in the next room until it splits to the south and the west. To the west is a single bush. Hunt around inside it to find some Ballet Shoes. Despite how they sound, the Ballet Shoes are a weapon, and only worth grabbing if you plan to kill monsters. Backtrack the way you came and take the southern path.
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A big dude named Onionsan lives in the next area. He’ll follow you around and be generally friendly, and if you backtrack once he’ll have something new to say. Be nice to him and he’ll follow you through this room every time you come through. (Probably not often.) Even Toby Fox doesn't seem to know why Onionsan exists, so don't think too much about this oddity.
Leave Onionsan's eastbound straightaway. There's a new enemy in the next area:
- Shryens. Lilting, shy crooners, Shyrens shoot musical notes at you which can be easily avoided by remaining at the bottom of the box.
The path splits here. If you head north you’ll find a piano, with instructions on how to play... though you don’t have a song to play. You’ll get clues for it in the next room, but if you want to bypass the detective stuff, the song is as follows:
- Z,
- Z + Up
- Z + Right
- Z
- Z + Down
- Z
- Z + Down
- Z + Right.
To the east is a statue, and beyond that a bunch of umbrellas. Put an umbrella on top of the statue and the falling rain creates the song you need to play on the piano. (If you want to figure this out on your own, just remember that you’re only playing the first eight notes.) You can grab another umbrella to advance with a chatty monster at your side, as well. At the end of this path you can return the umbrella, if you like.
- There’s a save point in the next room. Use it, as the knight is going to be chasing you again in the next area. This time you need to avoid spears that pop out of the floor from blue portals. This is easy so long as you take your time and stand still when you’re caught between spears. The area you need to traverse is quite large, and full of dead ends. Head east until it starts to branch out, then run to the southeast. Eventually you’ll hit another room, along with a dead end - and a cut scene that drops you into a new area.
You're now in the underground's garbage dump. To the east of where you land is a save point, and you're strongly advised to use it. Wade through the heaps of junk to the northeast and, along the way, you'll find a cooler containing several Astronaut Foods. Whether you punch or ignore the dummy, you're in for some trouble.
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Mad Dummy
HP: 300
This is a weird two-part battle. The Mad Dummy uses the following attacks over the course of the fight:
- Summons smaller dummies that fire projectiles at you
- Summons robotic dummies that fire homing missiles at you
- Hurls a knife at you (one time only)
The Mad Dummy employs a series of tinier dummies, collectively launching waves of bullets your way. These aren’t too difficult to avoid - but that’s all you’ll get to do, as no Actions work on the Mad Dummy, and physical attacks are useless. The trick here is to get the smaller dummies to fire at the Mad Dummy, since their bullets fly out of the box. This gets trickier to do as the battle wears on, since the Mad Dummy starts to move around and won’t allow you to get in as many shots. Stick to the top of the screen and try to stay with it at all times.
Eventually you’ll do enough damage that the Mad Dummy begins using robotic dummies These launch missiles instead of bullets, and the missiles are much harder to avoid. Move away from the robots before they launch, then guide the missiles around in one or two loops. Once they’ve looped enough times the missiles fly off in whatever direction they were pointed, preferably up towards the Mad Dummy. Do this enough times to end the battle.
Napstablook shows up during the battle with the Mad Puppet. Follow him north to find an intersection. You can go four different directions from here:
- To the west is the duck you saw earlier in Waterfall. It will ferry you back to the beginning of Waterfall, if you want to backtrack to Snowdin.
- There are houses to the northwest and north. The central path leads to Napstablook’s home. There’s plenty to do if you check all of the appliances and keep talking to Napstablook, though you won't find anything of great importance.
- The northwestern path leads to a locked, fishy home. You'll wind up coming here if you go down the Pacifist route.
- East of Napstabloo's home is a snail farm, where you can play a truly epic minigame: Thundersnail.
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Thundersnail
Thundersnail is, weirdly enough, a decent way to make money if you feel like wasting a lot of time. Thundersnail is a race between three snails from one end of a track to the other. Your snail is always the yellow one up top, and it’s always the slowest. In order to make your snail move more quickly you need to encourage it with the X button. Every time you do it will move just a little bit faster... but only if you don’t encourage it too often. If you ram the button you’ll paralyze the snail, and may set its shell on fire in the process.
The key here is to carefully time your encouragements. For the first half of the race you should encourage the snail every two to three seconds. Once it reaches the halfway point, let the snail run the rest of the course. It should be fast enough to outpace the red snail by a small margin and win the race. If your snail stops completely, you’re tapping too quickly.
Entry into a Thundersnail race is 10 gold. If your snail wins you’ll receive 9 gold, because Napstablook needs to earn a profit. Lame. If, however, your snail loses by a tiny margin - it basically has to be on the checkered strip - you’ll get 30 gold, because Napstablook is embarrassed by the mix-up. Use encouragements to temporarily slow down your snail enough for the red one to win. Get good enough at this and you can pile up a decent amount of gold.
(Though, uh, there's a better way to earn gold coming up. So... maybe don't bother too much with Thundersnail.)
Waterfall Vendor
Head east of the save point after you’re done mucking about with Napstablook. There’s a Box on the next screen, and beside it is a store. The storeowner has lots to say, so Talk through all of his conversation options to learn more about the locals. The weapon and armor he sells (Cloudy Glasses and Torn Notebook) are statistically inferior to what you could have by now, but they’ll allow you a longer period of invincibility in battle whenever you get hit by an attack.
The next area to the east contains an unlit path which you can make appear by interacting with the clusters of mushrooms. Simple enough. A new enemy appears here:
- Temmies. Temmies are adorable little dog things that attack by trying to walk on you. Stay between their legs and you’ll do fine. If you Flex in front of a Temmie you'll bring an Aaron into the fight, after which you can Spare the Temmie.
- Moldbyggs. Masquerading as Moldsmals at first, Moldbyggs rise up after an interaction. They fire projectiles at you, and are no big deal.
Once the path here seemingly ends, make your way back to the start to find another hidden path that has become illuminated that will take you west. From here you need to muck about in the dark, looping north and then back south, on your way to the east. There’s a bit of stumbling, but it’s not too difficult to make your way, and illuminating all of the mushrooms lights all of the paths.
If you head to the southeast corner of this area you'll find a path that leads to an optional side area. You should absolutely check this place out.
Temmie Village - TEM SHOP
Temmie Village - Vendor (after college)
What a useful place. Temmie Village is filled with Temmies, as you might expect, and they're a pack of vapid idiots. Have fun! Talk to whomever you like, but the only person of real use is the Tem in the 'TEM SHOP'. She's the only vendor you'll run across who will buy your stuff, albeit at some bizarre prices. She tends to purchase one-off equipment items and stuff from the Ruins (Spider Cider, Monster Candy, etc.) at much higher prices, and occasionally will really want an item you're offering her - to the point that you can drive up the price. Don't push Tem on this more than once, or the price drops back down.
The Tem's initial items are almost universally useless, save one: Sending Tem to college for 1,000 gold. This seems like a waste of money, but if you do this you'll unlock the temy ARMOR!!! item, at the high, high price of 9,999 gold. Eesh. The price comes down every time you die, though, and it's eventually cost-effective. temy ARMOR!! is fantastic piece of armor if you bother to save up, and trivializes much of the remaining game.
The Tem's initial items are almost universally useless, save one: Sending Tem to college for 1,000 gold. This seems like a waste of money, but if you do this you'll unlock the temy ARMOR!!! item, at the high, high price of 9,999 gold. Eesh. The price comes down every time you die, though, and it's eventually cost-effective. temy ARMOR!! is fantastic piece of armor if you bother to save up, and trivializes much of the remaining game.
This begs the question: How do you earn that much money? If you picked up the Dog Residue, you have an answer. Use the Dog Residue to fill your inventory with additional Dog Residue and Dog Salads, sell of everything generated by the Dog Residue, then repeat the process. As long as you hold on to at least one Dog Residue you can farm gold from the Temmie forever. Dog Salad sells for more, so pray that you get more salad than residue.
Return to the darkened area of Waterfall once you've had your fill of Temmie Village. To the east is a maze-like area with purple crystals. The longer you linger here, the darker it gets, until you’re stuck wandering blindly down the paths. The trick here is to interact with the small, blue lamps that appear intermittently along the way, as they’ll light the area and allow you to advance. Wander towards the northeast to find the exit.
In the next area you have the choice to save the monster who’s been tailing you this whole time or leave him to his fate. (Unsurprisingly, saving him is the Pacifist thing to do.) Turn back west and you’ll find a new path to the north after this encounter. In the next area you’ll have a conversation that changes depending on your actions up to this point, though you'll be forced to fight regardless. Save, heal, and get ready for one of the more difficult battles in Undertale.
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Undyne
HP: 1,500
The most powerful creature you’ve encountered thus far, Undyne is no pushover. She can’t be Spared immediately, like most bosses, and has lots of health. You can either defeat her with Challenges or physical hits, both of which have roughly the same effect on her attack patterns. You can expect the following attacks as you battle Undyne:
- For the first little while Undyne launches darts at you, and you'll be unable to move. Use the arrow keys / control pad to redirect the shield in front of your heart to ward off tehe darts. These get progressively faster and faster, and when she says she’s done ‘warming up’ she’ll launch a spear at you that you can’t block. You’ll have to move out of the way.
- Once your heart is red again you’ll have to dodge spears, similarly to previous non-encounters with Undyne. Move in loose circles.
- Occasionally you’ll also be stuck in a small box with spears launching out of the ground at you. Stay near the top and move into lines that currently have no spears poking out of the ground. Easy enough.
- Late in the battle Undyne introduces a new kind of dart to the first set of attacks. These yellow darts come in from one direction, then jump to the opposite side just before hitting your heart. These darts usually correspond with other, normal darts, so as long as you don't spin your shield around wildly you'll intercept them. There's one phase where Undyne only uses yellow darts, which gets confusing.
You can't Spare Undyne like other monsters. What you can do is run from her. Early on Undyne turns your heart green, though it changes back to red now and then. Once it does, choose Mercy and Flee. You'll escape the battle. Immediately run north, away from Undyne, and keep running from her through the next few areas. You'll get into repeat fights with Undyne a few times, but once you see lava the fight leaves the knight.
This next part is crucial. If you want Undyne to keep showing up you need to run until she gets too hot and collapses. Once she does, go to the nearby water cooler - for some reason there's a water cooler - and grab a cup of water. Splash it on Undyne to refresh her, which sends her packing. You must do this before leaving the screen, or Undyne disappears (and presumably dies).
If you moisturize Undyne she'll survive the encounter. At this point, assuming you dated Papyrus, you can go back to Undyne's house (the fishy place near Napstablook's home) to date her. She'll respond to phone calls from your Cell Phone, just like Papyrus, and you can speak to her near Papyrus's home in Snowdin Town.
Regardless of whether or not you finish off Undyne, you've now arrived in the fourth major area of Undertale: Hotland. You're getting close to the finish line.